FBL cited as best outdoor campaign in history.

Advertising | Marketing | Experiential | Aero/Astro Space

Top recruiting firm recruits Lean&Mean.

A Bit About Us

You’ve been entrusted with a brand. Your baby.

And, like any baby, you want it to grow. Get strong. Maybe even become famous. We understand that more than many other advertising agencies. Because before we were agency people, we were clients. So, like you, we know the importance of immersing ourselves in a product, its competition and the market dynamics.

In other words, we live with it. Then we brainstorm it. Tissue session it. Gut check it. Sleep on it. Then go back at it the next day, or week, or whatever it takes. Until one day, the clouds part, and there, before our eyes, is the Holy Grail of marketing. The Big Idea. So it’s your baby. Give it to somebody who’ll care for it as much as you do.

Hello & Welcome!

Someone once said, “Writing is wrestling with one’s thoughts.” If that’s true, I’ve pinned a few thoughts to the mat during the course of my career. Which turned into campaigns that have given clients a compelling, distinctive voice. And consumers a reason to act. Which is, after all, what great advertising should do.

Ron Wachino

Managing Partner
Copy

What’s Up?

I can draw, comp, typeset, retouch, edit, mix, code a website, and serenade you on guitar. But nothing gets my heart beating faster than creating something new and wonderful. It’s that feeling we all got when we were kids and opened up that new package of clay. I still have that feeling every time I get a new assignment.

Bernie Hogya

Managing Partner
Art

Nice To Meet You!

I’ve coordinated marketing, communications and public relations efforts at some of the world’s leading companies, managed press relations for General Colin Powell, worked as President and CEO of the Buoniconti Fund to Cure Paralysis and served in the Bush Administration as Director of Marketing at the Points of Light Foundation. Oh, and I started my marketing career at Nike where I competed for the company at the 1980 and 1984 U.S. Olympic Trials.

Tim Hanlon

Managing Partner
Strategy

My passion for photography and art production began at Motown Records. I honed my skills producing content shoots for advertising clients all over the world. I pride myself on running all of my projects efficiently through my knack for organization and smart problem solving.

Shena Hickman

Head of Art+Content Production

I’m a creative soul inside and out. That artistic point of view combined with an unbridled tenacity is what makes me a successful producer. In my spare time I’m a painter, photographer, and Jersey girl who isn’t ashamed to admit she knows every Springsteen lyric by heart.

Paddy Giordano

Head of Video Production

I am an innovative communications professional with over 20 years of experience in media relations. I'm a hands-on media practitioner who has cultivated and maintained relationships with leading national print and broadcast editors, producers and reporters.

Angela Crawford

Head of Public Relations

The business reasons for working with Lean&Mean.

Lean means you’re saving money. And mean? Well, that just shows that we’ll fight tenaciously on behalf of your brand.

We know that advertising is more than just pretty pictures. Or the clever turn of a phrase. It’s about results. Here are some examples of how over 75 years of combined experience has moved the needle for our clients.

Atkins. We used the power of celebrity, in this case Alyssa Milano, to explain why, in a sea of weight loss companies clamoring for attention, Atkins is different. Result? New Atkins “starts,” or first time buyers of Atkins products, are on track for a record year, with a 25% increase over the previous year.

Chocolate Milk. Leveraging the street creds of elite athletes like Kevin Love and Klay Thompson, we repositioned Chocolate Milk from a kid’s drink to a recovery beverage for athletes. Result? The “Nutrients to refuel. Protein to rebuild.” campaign is paying huge dividends. Consumption went from 11% to 22% since the advertising started. And that number directly correlates to those aware of our campaign.

White Milk. The “Got milk?” mustache campaign used the biggest names in TV, movies, and music—from Elton John to Muhammad Ali, Taylor Swift to David Beckham, the Simpsons to Shaq—to inform moms (and kids) about the benefits of drinking milk. Result? It helped reverse a 30-year decline in milk sales and, along the way, became a pop culture phenomenon.

And the human ones.

Someone once said, “We must pay rent for the space we occupy on this Earth.” For us, our rent is paid in all the ways we’ve used our skills to get a different type of result—making someone’s life a little better.

While we’ve spent our entire careers working on causes, like UNICEF, the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis and the Ad Council, the most compelling example is the campaign we created (and are still creating) for the Foundation for a Better Life. Of course, helping and encouraging people is the ultimate goal of that campaign.

But we recently received a little icing on the cake. The FBL campaign was cited as being “the most successful public service campaign in the history of outdoor advertising.”

Some Of Our Work

No strategy, however brilliant, ever ran. No presentation, however entertaining, ever went on the air. While all the other steps in the process are extremely important, only one thing runs. The work. Here’s some of the work we’ve done here, and at other agencies, that ran. And what happened when it did.

Brands We’ve Worked On

Lean&Mean is our newest agency. But it’s not our only agency. Over the course of our careers, we’ve worked in almost every category. If your brand isn’t here, give us a call. There’s plenty of room on this page.